Background
Teng is a native of Kuei-yang hsien in southern Hunan. Born in 1910 into a peasant family, he received only a primary school education.
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Teng Hua
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Teng Hua, a career Red Army officer, is a veteran of the Long March, the Sino-Japanese War, and the Korean War. One of the earliest soldiers of the Red Army, he has been a Party Central Committee member since 1956. He was the top PL A commander in Manchuria from 1955 to 1959 but since then has served in a minor political capacity in Szechwan. Teng’s political decline was apparently linked with the fall of Politburo member P'eng Te-huai in 1959.
Education
Teng joined the Communist movement in the late 1920’s and although the details are lacking it is evident that he was one of the early members of the Red Army. He may have been with Mao Tse-tung during the Autumn Harvest Uprisings among the Hunanese peasants in 1927 and then followed him to Chingkangshan and Juichin.
By 1931 Teng was a student at a cadres’ institute in Juichin, the capital of the central soviet region, and in the same year he was a regimental political commissar in the First Army Corps.
Career
Teng served with the First Army Corps, led by Lin Piao and Nieh Jung-chen, during the Long March (1934-35). The Corps was one of the major components of Mao’s First Front Army. By mid-1936 when Edgar Snow visited Communist-held areas in north Shensi, Teng was director of the Political Department of the First Army Corps’ Second Division. The division political commissar was then Hsiao Hua and Yang Te-chih was the commander. When the Eighth Route Army was organized in the late summer of 1937, Lin and Nich were given command of the 115th Division. Teng led one of its units, which moved into the Shansi-Chahar-Hopeh Border Region. For a brief period in 1938 his unit was put under Ho Lung’s 120th Division and was combined with forces led by Sung Shih-lun. In the T'e-sung-Teng Detachment,as it is usually described in Communist sources, Sung was the commander and Teng was political commissar. In June they advanced into eastern Hopeh, which was an important communications link to Manchuria for the Japanese. This campaign and the subsequent establishment of the East Hopeh Administrative District are described in the biography of Sung. The main Sung-Tcng forces were wiped out in the fall of 1938, but they managed to maintain a small guerrilla base throughout the war, which was particularly useful to the Communists in their struggle against the Nationalists after the war ended in 1945. Little information is available about Teng’s wartime record after 1938, but he apparently continued to serve as a political officer with Communist guerrilla units in those portions of Hopeh closest to Manchuria.
When the-war ended in the summer of 1945 Lin Piao was sent to Manchuria, where he established the Northeast Democratic Allied Army. Teng accompanied Lin to Manchuria and commanded the Seventh Column. Concurrently, in 1945 he was in command of the Liaohsi (provincial) Military District and was principal of the Liaohsi Military and Political School. In 1948 when the Communists were completing their conquest of Manchuria, Teng assumed command of the 15th Army Corps. He continued in this capacity when Tientsin and Peking fell in January 1949，by which time Lin’s forces were known as the Fourth Field Army.
Teng's positions during the next year and a half indicate the course of the Fourth Field Army's drive south. When Nanchang was captured in May 1949 he served briefly as a member of the Nanchang Military Control Commission, and after the fall of Canton in October Teng became commander of the city’s garrison force, a post he retained until 1951. He was also made a member of both the Canton Military Control Commission headed by Yeh Chien-ying and the Executive Committee of the Sino-Soviet Friendship Association’s Canton branch. At the provincial level he was made first deputy commander of the Kwangtung Military District (again serving under Yeh) and second deputy commander of the South China Military District, which controlled the provinces of Kwangsi and Kwangtung.
In 1951 Teng was transferred from south China to the war in Korea. He was removed from the CSMAC in June 1951 and, although he officially retained his membership on the Kwangtung Provincial People’s Government Council until June 1954, he was not active in Kwangtung after 1951. Teng’s assignment to Korea probably resulted from the fact that the major units of the “Chinese People’s Volunteers” in Korea were drawn from the Fourth Field Army, with which he had been associated since its establishment in the winter of 1948-49. Teng was first identified in Korea in July 1951 when he represented the CPV in the initial armistice talks, which began that month. He was replaced in this capacity in October, but by that time he was identified as the CPV deputy commander under Commander P’eng Te-huai. During the next two years Teng commanded elements of the CPV in various battles, and in gratitude for his service the North Korean Government awarded him its highest decoration in February 1953. Teng continued to serve as P’eng’s deputy until September 1954 when he replaced him as the CPV commander. However, a month later he relinquished this post to Yang Te-chih (his colleague from the mid-1930’s) and returned to Peking.
Teng was last identified as the commander in Shenyang in April 1959 and by November he had been replaced by Ch'en Hsi-lien. His activities received no notice from the Chinese press until May 1960 when he was elected a vice-governor of Szechwan a post of far less significance than his commander's role in Manchuria. Since going to Szechwan Teng has seldom been mentioned in press reports. His fall from effective political power was emphasized by the fact that he was serving under Governor Li Ta-chang, who is only an alternate member of the Central Committee in contrast to Teng’s full membership. Moreover, another alternate, Liao Chih-kao, serves as one of the provincial Party secretaries, a post apparently denied to Teng. Speculation concerning Teng’s political stature received another fillip in January 1965 at the close of the first session of the Third NPC when Teng was not re-elected a member of the National Defense Council. The timing of his removal from his military post in Manchuria (1959) coincided with the political demise of PJeng Te-huai, with whom he was associated in Korea. Of course, P'eng was also officially removed from the National Defense Council in January 1965. Teng continues to hold his seat on the Central Committee, but since 1959 this seems to be largely nominal.
Politics
Teng's positions during the next year and a half indicate the course of the Fourth Field Army's drive south. When Nanchang was captured in May 1949 he served briefly as a member of the Nanchang Military Control Commission, and after the fall of Canton in October Teng became commander of the city’s garrison force, a post he retained until 1951. He was also made a member of both the Canton Military Control Commission headed by Yeh Chien-ying and the Executive Committee of the Sino-Soviet Friendship Association’s Canton branch. At the provincial level he was made first deputy commander of the Kwangtung Military District (again serving under Yeh) and second deputy commander of the South China Military District, which controlled the provinces of Kwangsi and Kwangtung.
Membership
During his tour of duty in Korea, Teng became a member of both the CPPCC and the NPC. He had been in Korea only a short time when the third session of the CPPCC First National Committee (October-November 1951) appointed him to fill out part of the First CPPCC term. Teng was not re-elected to the Second CPPCC, which opened in December 1954, but by that date he had already been named to represent the CPV in the more important legislative body, the NPC, which opened in September 1954. He served out his term in the First NPC (1954-1959) but was not re-elected to the Second NPC, which opened in April 1959. He was also made a member of the newly created National Defense Council in September 1954 and was reappointed in April 1959.
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Born
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Nationality
China -
Ethnicity
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Political Party
Chinese Communist Party
Education
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1931
Career
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1937
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1945
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1951
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April, 1959